


Generational Twists

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Art, Body Dysphoria, Body Worship, Clones, Cousin Incest, Digital Art, F/F, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Multi, Platonic BDSM, Scars, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 14:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17747354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Growing up with ghosts is difficult; growing up together and alone, is also pretty unpleasant; the Lalondes try their best to build a home and the Striders pretend not to see the history in their walls.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ( Art is my own, hosted on my deviantart account, which I've been updating a bit since the tumblr purge. )

In hindsight, the death of her mother and her uncle hadn’t been all that surprising; Roxy recalled nights spent glued to the television screen, lapping up every report and newsreel that featured their newest escapades, of scanning every newspaper and eavesdropping on every conversation for word of their whereabouts.

Becoming direct influencers of public society came with costs, however, and this had been a fact Roxy had grown with; to stop potential kidnappings, Roxy’s upbringing had been secluded, and the distance from her mother great. Roxy had always known, in her own childish way, that her mother’s time on the planet had been limited at best. The “unproven” assassinations had been little more than a grand finale to David Strider and Roseline Lalonde’s career of social activism.

Her mother’s death, Roxy thought, had ironically somewhat been the start of her own life, as it had changed the courses of everyone’s lives.

When the social workers knocked on Roxy’s door, police in tow at the grave news of her mother’s misfortune, Roxy was ushered to the manor of one Roxanne Lalonde; an aunt with a daughter three years younger than herself, and a cat with the glossiest fur that Roxy had ever seen.

Her aunt had explained little; after showing her to the room she was to share with her new ‘sister’, and a few affectionate ruffles to her hair, the woman had been content enough to leave her to her own devices.

Roxy remembered staring face to face, with her cousin for the first time.

Rose had been so young, then.

So eager for any amount affection shared; a sentiment Roxy herself had mirrored and placated after her growth in isolation.

How quickly inseparable, they had become Roxy mused; losing themselves in her deceased mother’s books, and discovering their shared love of everything wizardly.

Their ‘Mom’ had even joined in somewhat, splurging a few thousand dollars to have statues of famous wizards dropped in right through their ceiling.

Such things had been almost fantastical, when they’d been five and eight.

Roxy remembered being little, and chasing after her new mother’s coattails with Rose, eager for every ounce of parental attention she could scrounge up.

The well-meaning woman hadn’t taken much notice of either of their efforts until they’d stumbled upon their decided talents.

Rose, ever as creative as the deceased aunt she was named for, was cursed with the proficiency of playing the violin and wit of word.

Roxy, named after Rose’s mother, seemed to have inherited the woman’s knack for the scientific and curiously un-seen.

At the discovery, Mom had swiftly ushered Roxy into the cushiony clutches of the Skianet company, and began fostering her skills under controlled conditions.

Meanwhile, Rose’s musicianal abilities also blossomed, and the notes of instrumentally ferried emotion often wavered throughout the house.

For a brief, shining moment, they had been a real family.

Their mother, attentive.

Rose, affectionate and trusting.

Herself, enamored with joy, the pain of her past nearly forgotten.     

Of course, such a moment was all too frail to last.

Well-intentioned as their mother was, Roxanne had been all to lost to her own trauma and could never separate herself from the drink for too long a time.

And, Roxy reflected with a bitter chuckle, she’d been all too impressionable a child, and all too eager to reflect the woman’s aspects back to her.

She’d started drinking with little more than a question of curiosity and an intention of impressing her.

Though Mom hadn’t encouraged it exactly, she certainly never made any motions to stop her from it, either.

She had started to drink more consistently, after that.

Rose hadn’t fully grasped the situation by that point, though she’d shown some mild discontent for how much time she’d been giving their neglectful guardian.

It wasn’t until Roxy had killed their cat, that everything had fallen apart.

The guilt still coiled within her; it was a stain Roxy couldn’t scrub away, no matter which chemicals she tried.

It had been an accident.

Jasper hadn’t made any noise, and Roxy hadn’t known he was right there at her feet, where she’d let the giant tomb fall flat.

Rose hadn’t been in the room.

Roxy had raced to their mother, hoping the beloved family pet had simply suffered something mild. A concussion perhaps.

Just… a concussion with a lot of blood, just an accident.

When their mother phoned a local mortuary, Rose had investigated for the tone of her voice.

...Roxy didn’t like to think upon the days before the funeral.  

She supposed having kept Jasper on ice for so long was the probable cause in her fascination with preserved wet specimens, but she figured it a moot point.

The ceremony had been almost beautiful; the rain, the gloom, the pretty dresses.

The stone mausoleum newly erected around the corpse of their tiny friend.  

Rose had cried almost nonstop, the days prior to the event.

At the ceremony, she’d been utterly silent.

Completely adrift.

She’d snapped, Roxy thought, in that final moment they stood above their beloved cat.

Rose grew colder.

Darker.

Her nightmares, which had always been something hounding Rose’s sleep, grew exponentially worse.

Her mild wariness of their mother bloomed into outright passive aggression.

And when Roxy had mustered up enough courage to admit to Rose that she’d been the one to cause Jaspers demise, in a misguided attempt to force their family into getting along again, Rose had looked at her, as if for the first time.

She hadn’t said a word.

And she continued, not saying a word, for days.

Weeks.

 

 

Truthfully, Roxy admitted, that time was likely the worst she’d lived through.

The worst of her drinking, the worst of her friendship disasters, the worst of her muddied thoughts, the memories of her dead mother seeping back into her thoughts; it had all filled her with a paralyzing notion that’d everything had been shattering, and that she’d been powerless to pick up the pieces.

Her desperation had borne some ingenuity though; Roxy commandeered some of Mom’s equipment, and gotten it working again.

The cloning machine explained a few questions that Roxy had never wanted to ask; Roxy sometimes recalled the manila envelope she’d found in one of the machine’s drawers, thick with papers and blurred photos.

Originally designed for people, Roxy had repurposed it.

Even in her state of drunken fugue, lockpicking the mausoleum had been simple.

Collecting samples from Jaspers had almost made her retch.

The weeks of Rose’s passive aggressive silence stretched into more volatile months, as Roxy worked endlessly on the machine; she couldn’t draw near to her sister without the girl viscerally reacting, so soon stopped trying.

She stopped answering pesterchum.

She barely took notice of her Mom.

She barely left the lab.

Failure after failure, the machine produced.

Kitten after ugly, horribly mutated, disfigured kitten.

Each documented, for science.

Mom let them live, the ones that were somewhat stable.

Roxy worked around them.

One kitten, in particular, took a shining to her; a little thing with four blind eyes and polydactyly toes.

Mutie helped ease her pain, somewhat.

And then, a breakthrough.

A perfect kitten.

An exact replica of the original.

Jasper, reborn.

Roxy had wept, holding the tiny mewling thing to her face; she’d praised the very genetic makeup that composed him, and the stars for whatever alignments they’d been in.

Roxy had taken the kitten and make the surreal journey up the stairs, and back into the house she’d grown up in.

She’d felt like a trespasser, journeying through ancient, unforgiving lands.

Rose had not been kind, to the manor. Its neglect had taken much time, to spruce up, after the schism had been mended.  

Her sister had been standing there, just some feet in the hallway, as if she’d been expecting her.

At the time, Roxy had held no idea, for how long her sister had been waiting.

Two years, she was to learn; nearly seven hundred and twenty of the darkest of days.

The shock had been really, what had forced Roxy to pull herself together.

Reconnecting with Rose had been almost a return to a dream; hearing her laugh, seeing her smile. It had been almost as if no time had passed at all, like they’d been a family, all along again.

Roxy had spent every minute with Rose that she’d allowed her; as desperate for human connection as Roxy had been, her sister had seemed all the more starved of it.

Wonderful as it was to have been interacting with her again as it was, it’d been all too easy to see that Rose hadn’t been doing all right.  

Finding Rose, a wisp of herself, at the bottom of her own well of inebriated sorrows, had been the push she’d needed to get everyone’s perspectives back.

First thing to go had been the bottles.

Every scrap of broken glass and every emptied vessel was disposed of in a mad haze of spring cleaning.

Carpets vacuumed, sheets washed.

Rose had looked at her strangely, but went so far as to tentatively return all the wayward books to their shelves.                 

The drink, had been Roxy’s next amendment.

She’d taken Rose’s hands in her own, and implored her with a promise of her own, that together they could get past the addiction.

The detoxes had been terrible.

Rose’s nightterrors grew rampantly; Roxy shuddered sometimes, whenever the blood-curdling screams echoed warningly in her mind.  

It had been a terrible thing, to be at such a loss to help her as she’d been; eventually, at another point of desperation, Roxy had swallowed her pride and her fears, and simply walked into the room she’d used to share with her, and cradled Rose in her arms.

Though it hadn’t seemed to do anything at first, Rose implored her, the next afternoon to move back into their old room, claiming her presence had helped.

Roxy agreed, mostly because she’d felt calmer knowing Rose wouldn’t have been suffering alone.

The top bunk had been obliterated; likely by Rose herself, in the two years of their separation, leaving only Rose’s bed to utilize.

Roxy hadn’t minded; along with their new cats, she’d actually quite liked all the cuddling.

Eventually, Rose’s terrors quieted.

Through unspoken agreement, they’d continued to share the room and its bed, too nervous to try anything else after finally having found the ‘fix’.

Rose came back to herself, in unannounced pieces; smirks here, knitted phalluses there.

Roxy had been beyond proud.

Together, they’d made something of a home, in their house.

Not even their Mom’s increasingly frequent blackouts had been little more than a mild inconvenience; though Rose’s dismissal of the woman was almost excamunnative.

Their attention had soon turned to recultivating their friendships; long distance names glowing along laptop screens with IP addresses and color-coded text chats.

Rose had three friends, John, Jade, and a boy named Dave.

Roxy added her own friends, Dirk, Jake, and a girl named Jane.

Two of those boys, Dave and Dirk, were actually their own relations; Dirk was the son left behind by her mother’s brother, and Dave’s father was the one who’d taken him in at his brother’s death.

Their other friends seemed to all be relations themselves, stretched over cousins and siblings and such; Jade and Jake stayed with an eccentric grandfather while Jane and John lived a more suburban life in a little town with a grandmother and a cat and dad and some ashes on a fireplace.  

When she’d tried to rekindle with her friends, Roxy remembered why she’d almost let her connections with them fade away in the first place.

While they were a terribly close-knit bunch, none of them were very good at relationships.

Jake and Dirk were a daily dilemma of miscommunications and Jane was unendingly devoted to ‘protecting’ Jake from Dirk’s influence, which was made all the more convoluted by Dirk’s complete submission to the girl in everything but his romantic interests.  

It had hurt, watching the boy who should have been her brother, choosing a stranger for a best friend.

It had hurt because she could tell the way he pitied her still, and chose to placate her rather than meet her as equals; he treated her as though it wasn’t her place to understand the hurt the world had placed upon him.

It had hurt, because Jane was so busy chasing after the boys, that she’d disregarded Roxy as anything more than amusing and harmless.

It hurt, because Jake was so sweet, and almost her best friend, but was too obtuse to consider anyone else’s feelings clearly.

It had all been her own fault, of course; she’d admitted it then and she could still see it now; the way her persona of a happy drunk had been crafted too well to be forgiven or broken down completely.

Roxy had made her bed apparent, and her friends were expectant she lay in it.

Rose’s friend’s had been a little more open; John had been sweet enough, if a little dense, and his sister Jade had been a wonderful conversationalist on many-occasion.

Out of respect for Rose, she’d left Dave out of the ring of her intended devotions; though she’d been happy for her sister to have a close friend, she’d almost felt sick, for hating that Rose had something she hadn’t.

As if she’d sensed her frustrations, Rose had drawn her closer.

In a series of curious moments, Rose chose to fashion a stronger attachment than Roxy would have considered.

She’d have been lying if she’d ever implied disliking it.

It’d been, intense; a private closeness not quite sensual but tender still, with thought.

Roxy supposed it had been a little like love.

Of course, their patch of contentment had been broken, when their Mom left.

Much like a cat on its last day, their mother had taken a walk down to the shore below their house, and boarded the skip and left without a word to pass on the wakes of the calming waters out in the bay; she’d washed up on the beach a few days later, the body of a dead cat in tow.

That night had been a tangled web of fears; Roxy remembered the overwhelming dread icing over her bones at the thought of the ensuing social worker prostrating them in front of court, only for a faceless, apathetic judge to split them up forever.

Rose suggested a few manners on ensuring the caseworkers never reached their destinations, but the jests fell flat.

In their last hour, they had clung to each other, each too afraid to let go, or to admit that things between them might have carried too far.

When the worker finally came, words spilled almost naturally form Roxy's lips; she found herself insisting casually that she should be left to manage her mother’s affairs, and to keep Rose's custody besides. She’d fished out records of her work at Skainet, and receipts of the housekeeping she’d seen to, building her case as an already emancipated teen, capable of running her inherited house.

The caseworker had been impressed, and more than a little sympathetic; the judge had been convinced by her testimony, and allowed the matter to be considered.

Months of frequent, and usually surprise checkups, had ensued.

Some were by the empathetic woman, and those were for the most part still painful, in a healing way, yet more or less easy to breeze through.

Other visits were from an abominable man, with forgettable features and an eerily displeasent demeanor that reminded both Rose and Roxy of a too-forward uncle with too much intelligence to feign any innocence.

A ‘comforting’ pat to Rose’s thigh had almost overturned the kettle of scalding tea in his lap; only Rose’s fear of the man’s legal sway had stilled her hand from wanted retribution. Later that night, in the safety of Roxy’s room, Roxy pried the secret from Rose’s grim-drawn lips. Roxy had never again allowed Rose to be interviewed alone, when Dr. Scratch was present.  

And so the visits had continued.

Visits to ask about their Mom’s funeral.

Visits to ask about their feelings.

Visits to inquire about her job at Skainet and her spending habits.

Visits to ask about their education.

The bombardment of visitations had been expected; Rose had played her parts dutifully and with conviction.

The demands of the court had been equally anticipated between them; after the first court hearing, Roxy had taken the liberty of moving into their Mom’s room, to put off any speculation of their previously shared quarters.

Distant as their pantomimes forced them to be; Roxy had struggled to make sure Rose had felt keenly, just how much she still cared for her. How much she was trying, to be the dependable person Rose needed her to be.

Rose’s response had of course been equally measured, and the pained smiles informed Roxy that Rose knew, and that she was trying, too.  

When the visits began to dwindle, from weeks, to months, to stopping entirely, neither of them allowed themselves to breathe.

They continued to dress in their formal attire, to speak in their passive pleasantries; each still hanging on the edges of their seat, walking on tiptoes, just _waiting_ for the one surprise intrusion that would catch them proverbially red-handed, and end their game for good.

Three months in, with no word, Roxy allowed herself to breathe.

At Rose’s instance of Murphy’s law, Roxy spruced up the security system around their house, and installed a laughably loud buzzer on their door.  

They’d be visited again, no doubt; but Roxy had made sure there’d be ample time for forewarning, first.

It had been another week, before Rose had approached her, tentative steps in the deadening of morning.

There had been no pretense, in her touches; no laughing dismissals of the closeness between them, no struggle to untangle themselves, before longing grew too much to bear.

They’d kissed before; breaths of freshwater in arid deserts of affection-starved hunger.

That kiss however, had been different.

They hadn't stopped it; they hadn’t stilled their wandering hands.

It still sent races up her spine, to recall the way Rose’s body had arched and molded against her own.

The words they let themselves speak. 

The promises, they were finally able to keep.

It had felt as though finally, _finally_ , they had reached the point of enjoying the life they had cheated so hard to achieve.

Which is what made it hurt all the more, when flickers of melancholy and concern had started welling within Rose’s eyes some months later.

It had taken some doing, but at length, Rose revealed the source of her unease.

Roxy had been admittedly overjoyed to reaffirm that it wasn’t her that Rose was unhappy with, but she’d quickly grown to match Rose’s displeasure at the explanation that their brother-cousins were suffering, and had been for some time.

The decision had been almost laughably simple. 

Their house was large, and largely empty, save for their cats.

Roxy made more than enough, working with Skia to talk of any concern of monetary loss.

It was only the thought of more, suffered silence, that put any weight on their lips.

Theirs was a selfish desire; they admitted such. 

After reaching their so-called ‘happy ending’, it had seemed so tragic, to cut their won-freedom so short.

But to put their choice of affections and their family’s suffering on the same scale was simply not a choice they could make; after all, they'd had practice hiding in the shadows. 

Roxy truthfully knew little of the mysterious Brodrick Strider, the fourth and only remaining sibling of their guardians.

By Rose’s reports, things hadn’t looked well for the man.

While not inherently a bad person, his flaws within his role concerned Rose greatly.

Roxy agreed there was little reason to wait. 

And so, it had been with a mix of pride and dread, that Rose begun work on luring the youngest Strider in.

Roxy could do little to sway Dirk, other than to fretfully pester him with questions of Rose’s loneliness and ideas for arranged meetups; under the guise that such frivolities might help socialize her. -Getting him used to the idea, well-worming into his head in advance, that eventually, such events would irrefutably take place.

Rose worked tirelessly, ingraining herself into Dave’s mind, making herself immovable and unmistakably necessary.

The final push had been laid months in advance; their visit to the Strider estate had been calculated, and manipulated by one series of events after another.

Their arrival confirmed many of their suspicions and beliefs; in person, none of the brothers could deny them, so strong was the Strider-Lalonde bond.

They were met with crass similies and boisterous half-smirks. Even Brodrick, saw fit to mill around them, offering juices and the choicest of seats.

The first night was a mess of jovial reunions; a few honest tears and bantering jests, thrown popcorn, a late night of Mario Karts and misused memes.

They camped out in the boy’s room; Rose and Roxy on Dave’s bed, Dirk watching on begrudgingly from his own with a lap full of scrap wires and a desk full of half sipped orange juice and Mountain Dew.

They kept the boys up, as long they could; each day folding neatly into the next.

The toured the apartment, and it's building, and the city street surrounding it.

They watched the boys' favorite movies, ate their 'specially made' macaroni. 

Roxy had never seen Rose's eyes so bright, and cunning. 

At the dawn of the third day, Rose left the boy's bedroom, too quiet to disturb anyone but Roxy.    

The motion made, Roxy dutifully kept Dirk and Dave’s attentions when they fumbled groggily, into a waking state some few minutes later.

By the time Dirk had the breakfast cereal poured, Rose strode into the kitchen space, every inch a proud victor drenched in sweat and vigor.

There was blood on her shirt, and her knitting needles in her hand. 

Bro, by contrast, was warily silent behind her; not that he had been emotive to start with, but there had been an extra air of compliance to him, that Roxy hadn’t seen in the man since her first Mom had cowed him over in the black and white photos of their distant pasts.

There was blood on his sword, and some on his shirt, too. 

The battle apparently won, and in Rose's favor, there was no fuss from any of the boys when Rose instructed Dave and Dirk to pack, 'as they would be accompanying them back to the manor.'

Roxy assured Dirk she'd already gathered most of the legal work; he'd be getting custody of Dave, she'd assured him. 

Due to the flight arrangements, they weren’t able to snag a seat on the flight back home with them, but they found a seat some hours later for Dave, and then quickly fixed up Dirk with a flight for the following week, when Dirk quietly asked for a bit more time to pack his delicate electronics and the rest of Dave's things.

They focused on making the boys comfortable; they gave the boys the spare room across from Rose’s door to share, though Dirk soon found himself at home in their expansive basement. He set up a makeshift bedroom in the labs, which Roxy was content enough to let him have at.

The boys reminded Roxy of skittish cats, adapting to a new environment for the first time.

They crept around corners slowly, tentatively feeling out ever room they walked into, ready to bolt at any sound or footfall.

Dave was easiest to tend to; with his wounds more on the surface, he had yielded quickly to Rose’s hands.

Drawing out his emotional and mental triggers however, had taken a few weeks of pestering and keen observation to learn and manage.

They’d learned to tread with careful hands and choicer words, to save him from unneeded guilt and embarrassment.  

To save his pride on such a matter, Roxy had switched out their dinnerware slowly; she’d replaced their metal and ceramic pieces for wooden ones over the course of a week, to keep Dave from flinching every time the pieces clicked together.

In fact, sound had been the largest feature in both of the boys’ traumas, or rather, the impending doom associated with the lack of it.    

To compensate, Roxy soon had music playing faintly throughout the house at all hours; she placed bells around every cat-collar and always had one manner of catchy tune or another radiating from her phone. Roxy began to talk louder, sang more often, and took up whistling, all to better help the boy’s keep track of her presence.  

Rose took a different approach.

Rose had always been a quiet girl, but with the addition of the boys, she honed her skill at it; she hoped to retrain them to equate surprise with reward, rather than with pain.

It was harder with Dirk, more ingrained in Bro’s ways as he was, but Rose was consistent and stubborn, and Dirk was a good enough swordsman to still his blade before it ever reached Rose’s skin.  

To alleviate some of his guilt over enabling Bro’s behaviours, and to assure himself that he was not putting too much of a strain on them financially, Dirk soon took up a position at Skialabs; a fact that had been well enough with the caseworkers, who had surprised them somewhere around the fourth month of the Strider’s integration.

After that, a pair of semi-competent robots were crafted by Dirk's hands; helpers, that liked to help around the lab. Following their creation came Roxy's discovery of Hal, and after a long drawn out battle, came Hal's subsequent android body. 

It took a little while, after that, to get used to there being five, instead of four. 

It certainly ensured that the house didn't feel empty anymore. 

After half a year, Roxy realized that the boys had finally stopped jumping at every opened cabinet, or reaching for their sword hilts any time Rose threaded her arms around their necks.

It had been a tear-jerking moment for her, upon realizing that the boys, and Rose, had all finally looked as though they’d made her house their home.


	2. Chapter 2

It was weird, living with the Lalondes. 

It was weird living anywhere, that wasn’t his Bro’s one bedroom apartment but, it was weird living with the  _ girls _ . 

Not to say that he wasn't grateful. 

By gods, if he was anything, it was grateful. 

It was just, strange. 

The house was so weird walking in; everywhere he looked, just reminded him that he was in  _ their  _ house. 

He was glad, that it was their house. 

No swords in the cabinets, none of Bro's smuppet piles littered around the couch; some of Dirk's tho, but that was cool. 

No surprise falls down the stairs. 

Well, admittedly he’d fallen down a couple of the stairsteps exactly one time, but that was due to the misplaced tail of a cat in the dark and he hadn’t held it against the cat because the Mayor was a really cool lil’dude and after he’d stumbled the whole house woke up and made sure he was okay Dirk went back to bed and Rose had made him a smoothie after making sure the Mayor was alright and Roxy spent the better part of twenty minutes stringing weird little icicle lights through the spokes of the railing on the stairs so it wouldn’t be that dark anymore.  

They did a lot of things for him, like that. 

It was, well, weird. 

He tried to shrug it off as best he could of course.

Play it cool. 

Just Lalondes being Lalondes; Lalonding in their natural habitat.

They didn’t even get mad at him for stepping on their cat. 

They didn’t get weird whenever he slipped up, and called Roxy ‘Mom’. 

They didn’t mind that he clung to them, babbling half-formed verses of incoherent raps and circlejerking monologues.   

They didn't tell him to 'square up', when he started to jitter and jump. 

It had surprised him, when Rose started focusing on him and his complexes and disorders and whatever else struck her fancy to diagnose him with; after those first few weeks tho, he'd seen Rose chill with Roxy enough to realize that such fascinations were in Rose's apparent nature. 

He’d felt guilty for that first month, for stepping between the closeness, that she had Roxy seemed to share.

He'd clam up midsentence, if Roxy rounded the corner to see him talking her sister. 

His sister? 

Roxy's cousin-sister-ward?

Gardening wasn't his strongsuit. 

Anyhow, he'd supposed that the death of their Mom and all, forced them to bond a lot better than what he and Dirk had to go through back when Dirk’s Bro had died. 

Roxy hadn’t seemed to mind though; if anything, she was every bit as supportive and nice as, well, what he guessed a big sister or a Mom was supposed to be. 

If Rose had taken time to talk to him, Roxy almost certainly _made_ time to hang out with him. 

It was fun gaming with her. 

Well, it was fun getting his ass kicked at games, by her, more accurately speaking. 

It was easy to see why Rose adored her. 

Easier even, to see why Dirk couldn’t handle her sincerity. 

Instead, it was Rose that Dirk minded most. 

He honestly hadn’t expected Dirk to challenge Rose as much as he did; it’d honestly scared him, seeing Rose tussle with his brother in a fit of frenzy, each vying for superiority. 

Of course, Rose had bested their Bro.

There was no way for Dirk to win. 

There’d been bruises, once, on Rose’s skin. 

Marks that prompted him and Dirk to pack their bags in a rush, as Roxy, unaware of the events, was making her way back from the Burger King, food in tow.

Instead of kicking them out however, Roxy had remained collected. 

There was to be no blood on her floors, she’d ordered. 

All tussles to remain locked in the gym room, she’d added. 

Dirk hadn't wanted to admit what had incited the scuffle but, Rose had held no such misgivings. 

Dirk apparently, had been obsessing over how Rose had managed to defeat their Bro, a feat not even Dirk had been able to boast. 

In the weeks that followed, he’d challenged her a lot. 

Each time, Rose reaffirmed that she wasn’t someone that could be bowled over, or ignored. 

When Dirk finally caved to her, she whispered something to him. 

Dave didn’t know what she’d said, but something changed between her and Dirk after that. 

Dirk calmed in a way that Dave had never seen before; it was startling, at least at first. 

He got used to it. 

After that, Dirk spent most of his time in the labs, welding up weird robot things, and using Roxy’s old spare parts. 

He’d been happy for him. 

Well, he’d been happy, until he’d felt alarmed. 

He hadn’t been sure what to expect, when he’d first moved in. 

He still didn’t. 

With how distant Dirk seemed, it felt as though he was carrying the weight of their situation on just his own shoulders. 

He’d asked him about it of course; a quit discussion squirreled away when the girls had been out of earshot. 

Dirk had noticed it too; Roxy had apparently acted just as odd, just as gently insistent. 

Dirk hadn’t been into Roxy’s jams though. 

Not like Roxy wanted. 

Jane was his best friend, he’d said. And there were just some things a Bro couldn’t share with his sister.   

There were somethings bros didn't share with their kid brothers, either. 

He hadn’t talked about it with him again, after that. 

If anything, their talk only solidified his guess of what he’d already end up doing. 

Rose had called to him, sometime after that.

He’d answered. 

It was a strange sort of little dance, that they did. 

One they’d started, he guessed, back when he still lived with Bro. 

He’d been home alone one night, at the end of his rope.

Rose had called him, as if she’d had some sort of supernatural superpower, knowing some sort of bad shape he’d been in. 

He didn’t know had she’d gotten his number. 

He’d never bothered to ask her. 

He just remembered shaking, one hand on the phone while the other hand gripped his sword hilt. 

Her talking through it all. 

The breathing. 

The blood.

The breathing. 

He’d needed her too much; he knew that. Known that, even when it was happening. 

So fed up with the scars on his skin, he’d wanted nothing more than to burn them off, to start again.

So fed up with the unrealistic expectations he and his family was living in, he'd been ready to cut out. 

He hadn't wanted to listen to her. 

He'd almost hung up. 

She’d told him to carve her name, letter by letter, into his arm.

It'd somehow been the only thing, that made any sense in his head. 

She’d promised that Bro would never lord over him again. 

It was the only scar, that he still refused to let Rose rub the cream on. 

He didn’t know how long he’d need it, now that he was in her house. 

In her arms, sometimes. 

Sleeping sometimes, in her bed. 

But he didn’t want it gone.

Not yet. 

Rose seemed to get that; she seemed to get a lot of things. 

She’d taken one look at him, when he’d first moved in, and taken him by the arm; led him around. 

He supposed he could’a felt all upset, like she’d kept him on her arm like one of those little purse dogs he’d seen in the city a lot; but he hadn’t. 

Her hands had been so soft. 

When they reached for his, his mind flashed images of that night on the floor and the sword in his hand, and her name on his arm felt like it’d burn deeper if he tried to resist her. 

Psychosomatic, she’d assured him. 

He’d let her mold him, just the same.

It was easier than trying to sort it out himself.

She painted his nails, run her fingers through his hair. 

Used his shades like a mirror as she applied her lipstick or pulled off her eyelashes. 

Getting him used to ‘sociable touch’, she’d explained. 

He didn’t think he’d needed it much, but Dirk had mentioned that Rose might, and Roxy was just as tender, just ready to place her hands on him with warm smiles and squishy hugs.

He wondered sometimes, about which traits Rose had picked up from Roxy, and which ones Rose had given her. 

Weird as it was for him to admit, they’d coaxed the life back into him, bit by bit  with all the family stuff, ‘till it was as easy as breathing. 

Jokes and laughter and trust flowing as easily as his sick rhymes. 

the girls' lipstick left marks on his skin.

Their laughter was so fucking infectious. 

In the funky pool fed by the river flowing underneath their house, Roxy taught him how to swim. 

She didn’t care, if he went around in boxers sometimes, since getting dressed took too much effort some days. 

She didn't scream, when she saw Rose’s name on his arm.  

Rose and Roxy were so close; so happy. 

Like they’d never even thought that jumping out at each other, swords drawn, was a normal thing to do. 

They insisted that that wasn’t. 

It was so easy, to believe them. 

To trust them. 

Like something deep in his bones told him that this was the way things had always meant to be. 

Like the girls were his home.

He wondered sometimes if his uncle had felt this way, about his Lalonde. 

David and Roseline, the world's most beloved and immortalized activists. 

He thought sometimes, that Bro should've died with Rose's Mom. 

It seemed somehow far more lonelier, that they hadn't matched. 

He did the dishes anytime Roxy asked. 

He read all of Rose’s fanfictions.

Dirk forgot to shower a lot. The girls loved to tease him over it, until he finally gave in and scrubbed off.

It was nice not living in a place that smelled like stale corn chips all the time.  

Rose asked him one night, if he’d wanted to learn the art of a proper bath. 

He’d said hell yeah, he did.     

He just hadn’t expected the bath to be  _ with  _ her. 

But he hadn’t able to turn back. 

It was a weird blurry line, the incestual jokes running rampant through Rose and Roxy’s sense of humor; the girls tried their best to match his and Dirk’s ironic flavor, but there was always a little too much ease in the way that Rose and Roxy talked without speaking, that made him suspect there were more to the jokes then he was supposed to think. 

It had seemed harmless enough though. 

He hadn’t felt up to Rose getting the one up on him, and teasing him for whatever witty pun she’d make of it, and so he’d carried on, collected. 

Cool. 

Stoic.   

He hadn’t looked, as Rose got undressed.

He’d kept his focus on his own hands, shrugging off the shirts and popping the buttons in his pants. 

They’d bathed together a couple of times, since that first one. 

Rose always smiled, in that way that he thought it meant that she was amused by him, but none of her jibes ever hurt. 

She always waited, until he took off his shades.

She always let him into the bath first; following after with a sort of grace he didn’t think sister-cousins ought to have. 

He supposed Lalondes just got more practice at those sorts of things. 

The bath itself was always the most fun part. 

He liked all the bubbles, and how he could sculpt them into different shapes and things like that.

The rubber duck was also pretty sweet. 

First time she’d talked him into bathtime, Rose had told him about how she and Roxy grew up sharing baths, and how’d they made bubble beards and wizarding hats. 

It’d almost made him sad at the thought, that’d he’d missed out on stuff like that.

Showers at Bro's place had been little more than a guaranteed surprise training session; he figured it was the reason Dirk was so adamant about never washing of his own accord. 

After learning of Dave's invitation to bathtime, and the wonderful world of bathbombs and rubber ducks, Dirk was apparently granted access only under the clause of showering off separately first, as to not get the water all gross. 

Dave liked baths better without Dirk; not 'cause it wasn't as fun with him, but mostly because Dirk was an ass who always stole the rubber duck. 

Usually, they’d stay in until the water got cold, or most of it was on the floor. 

Rose would hop out, and tell him to clean up the mess; she’d leave him too it, and he’d find her next some hours later, reading on the couch or chattering away at breakfast the next day. 

After his unhelpful talk with Dirk tho, Dave'd taken the initiative to invite Rose to a bath. 

It was as far as his initiative had decided to take him; once she’d been there, standing in front of him, his voice cut out and body went pliant, leaving Rose to take him by the elbow. 

The bath’d carried on like usual.

They’d spent an hour or so, just goofing around in the water, making a Bubble Town and splashing water everywhere, before Rose had brought out all the soaps. 

Like, he’d known conceptually that there were all kinds of soaps and things, but he’d never thought of using them all on himself before he’d moved in, and he’d never thought that Rose would be the one applying the stuff on his skin routinely, or that after she spent a long time, lathering him up and rinsing him off, that’d he’d be the one rubbing sudds all over her. 

He’d tried his absolute damndest, everytime, not to make a fool of himself or fumble with his fingers; but there was something about Rose just being close to him, that made all sorts of terrible heat course through him. 

She never said anything about it. 

He’d never been able to tell if he’d  _ wanted  _ her to say anything about it. 

After they’d stepped out of the tub, Rose towelled him dry; she’d prompted him to do the same for her, and then beckoned him to take a seat on her bed.

He’d been terrified.

His heart raced so fast, he’d been certain it’d been audible anywhere in the house. 

His boner at least, was certainly visible to anyone in the room. 

To Rose.

Rose’d grabbed a bottle of something from her dresser thing; walked towards him all comforting and soft. 

His voice had left him the moment Rose had pressed the towel to his chest, and at that point, he had only been able to squeak. 

Rose’s hands started rubbing the stuff onto his body, and it took him a minute to figure out what it was, what with how hard it’d become for him to think. 

Scar cream; she’d said a lot of things about it when he’d first moved in, all gentle and reassuring, about how his body was his own now, and the cream would just help dim all the old reminders away. 

She’d applied it to him before; she’d usually sit him in the living room and strip him bit by bit as she worked it into his skin. Sometimes Roxy would help, or do it instead. 

They’d put kiss marks on the worst of the scratchy patches; take turns peeling and sticking hordes of little bandaids over the rest. 

When he picked at his scabs, they’d tie hands. When he pulled or twisted or fluttered erratically under their care, Rose would be quick with her knitting strings. 

Dirk’d remind him that he was strong enough to break free, if he really wanted to. 

Roxy would fetch him juice. 

Rose would make terrible jokes, until the panic left his brain.  

He’d foolishly thought that those times, had been intimate.

This time Rose’s hands followed the scars in familiar paths and it left him feeling breathless and faint.  

She spent a lot of time on his hands, where the cuts crossed over the most. 

Sometimes the water still lingering inside her hair’d dripped onto his thighs and reminded him of tears. 

She’d stopped, when she’d reached his thighs. 

He hadn't known how to tell her that he trusted her, that he’d been willing, probably, to do anything for her. 

Be anything, for her. 

He’d known from chatting with her growing up, that she’d liked girls; which he wasn’t. 

He’d almost started crying, for weird wishing that’d he’d not’ve been a boy, and that Rose not’ve been his sister. 

He’d cupped a hand over himself and forced his legs to spread and stay there; he’d kept his lip between his teeth from saying anything stupid. 

Rose’d rubbed the cream over his legs, his thighs. 

Her little black nails trailing over crisscross-tangled scars that he wished she didn’t have to see. 

She was the only one strong enough out of the both of them to look, though.

He didn’t know if his issues showed through, or if Rose had been that good at knowing him anyhow, but she’d grabbed them underwear then. 

A pair for her, a pair for him. 

He didn’t know what to feel, if anything, about the way her clothing felt good against him.

She must’ve noticed him fighting not to rub himself through the fabric, because she’d told him it’d be okay if he ‘took care of things’.

He hadn’t known exactly what Rose’d intended but, he’d excused himself back to the bathroom for a few minutes to center himself as best as he was able. 

He’d been extra careful, to take her underwear off, and to not get anything on them. 

Or the floor, or anything anywhere, really. 

He’d grabbed his shirt from the laundry basket in the corner and made it as efficient as he could. 

He’d figured Rose’d peg him a victim of basic biology, and he’d not wanted her to think him some kind of skeeve like Bro. 

When he’d finished, he’d expected to walk back into her room, to see her done up in some overly fanciful nightgown or something. 

She was just as he’d left her. 

Not sexy, just existent. 

He braced himself, pushing all the reminding thoughts through his brain that he could; he lowered himself between Rose’s legs.

He took a breath, and placed a kiss against each of her knees.

Rose ran her fingers through his hair; he exhaled, under the comforting attention.  

When he went to kiss against her legs again, she forced his chin up, to look at her; her dark eyes were mapless. Her smile, questioning. 

Only with Rose’s hands, fretting around his mouth, was he able to admit, to all the things he’d been thinking. 

He told her about everything he’d told Dirk he’d been afraid of.

He admitted, to everything he’d seen.

Rose was shocked, to learn that she and Roxy hadn’t been as careful as they’d thought. 

Dave watched the revulsion overtake her, apparent and distraught. 

He tried to soothe her, as best as he was able; his body useless, he rapped pleasant rhymes in an effort to stop Rose’s recoil. 

Minutes later, when the initial wake had passed, Rose calmed. 

The effort it took, for her to regale with him the truth of  _ all  _ the matters, left Dave with a newfound respect for her. 

It was a lot to take in for the both of them, he felt; their secrets and intentions left the air between them awkward. 

When Rose admitted that she’d just been following his lead, his breath came easier. 

He admitted that’d he’d been terrified of living up to Roxy’s capabilities.  

Rose snorted; an ugly sound that left a pretty smile on her face. 

She asked him what he wanted. 

He asked her if he could keep the scar of her name. 

In the months that followed, Rose promised, in her yarn trusses and wandering limericks, that’d she’d always make him feel safe.  


End file.
